Ohio EPA directs Dayton to cleanup groundwater contamination

Page Content

The Dayton Daily Newsreports the City of Dayton has asked the Air Force for nearly $1 million to reimburse costs for environmental testing and studies to track groundwater contamination. The city believes the contamination is caused by firefighting foam contaminants on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

City officials, according to the report, are concerned the contamination will impact the Huffman Dam wellfield, which is a half-mile away from the base.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency says it only learned during a meeting with the city on February 16 that sampling results in monitoring wells at the Tait’s Hill wellfield showed high levels of a perfluoroakyl substance (PFAS), a contaminant “found in an old formula of aqueous film-forming foam that was used as a fire-fighting [sic] retardant.”

Even though the Tait’s Hill wellfield, which is part of the much larger Mad River wellfield, supplies water to a broad section of the region, both the EPA and city say the water distributed to customers is safe.

Nevertheless, the EPA has directed the city to “track and mitigate potential contamination from the firefighting training center and determine the source of a small level of PFAS contamination at the city’s Ottawa treatment plant in the Mad River well field [sic]​.”

NGWA published a guidance document to identify the known science and knowledge related to PFAS. A download of the comprehensive document is available for free to all Association members, while a printed version is available for purchase through the NGWA online bookstore.